. Connaught. beings, let alone cows,travel those rocks without breaking a leg a weekin the fissures passes all comprehension. Rocky though the soil, these waters are not barren,and Aran lives by its nets, and lives much better thanit did in the old days before the Congested DistrictsBoard set up the folk with strong boats and goodgear, and established a steamer to bring them intouch with the market. Yet Synges wonderful andterrible little drama, Riders to the Sea, tells the truestory of their life, shows how encompassed it is atany moment by the deadliest peril; for the waves onthat western co
. Connaught. beings, let alone cows,travel those rocks without breaking a leg a weekin the fissures passes all comprehension. Rocky though the soil, these waters are not barren,and Aran lives by its nets, and lives much better thanit did in the old days before the Congested DistrictsBoard set up the folk with strong boats and goodgear, and established a steamer to bring them intouch with the market. Yet Synges wonderful andterrible little drama, Riders to the Sea, tells the truestory of their life, shows how encompassed it is atany moment by the deadliest peril; for the waves onthat western coast have been seen to break wherethere was nearly a hundred feet in depth of water,so vast, so tremendous are the movements of stormwhere the Atlantic swings in its full force upon thefirst bulwark it meets—a bulwark planted in the deep,and dreadfully sudden therefore in its check to thewhole power of ocean. That is what gives a special character to all thescenery of western Ireland. It is not only sea you. CONNAUGHT 15 are looking at, it is ocean: ocean in its full depthwithin a few miles of the shore, and the blueness ofdeep water is a very different thing from the blue ofthe Irish Channel or the English, to say nothing of theyellowish waters of the North Sea. And the washof waves there, even on a calm day, has in it a slov7,heavy rhythm, a sense of power which rocks andsoothes the senses. But to face that sea on thatcoast, not only rockbound but flanked with a line ofreefs and islands, in hooker or pookaun or canvas-covered curragh, is an enterprise that might welldismay. Yet, oddly enough, these men whose dailylife is one long risk of drowning, who endangerthemselves times innumerable in the mere act ofentering or leaving a curragh when a sea runs, aremore frightened than women by the unknown ad-venture of sailing in a strong vessel clear away tosea, and when they first lose sight of land and seeonly water round them, they will lie down and givethemselves over for lost. A
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1912
